Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/22 – Alphabet Sends Loon To The Deadpool

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Friday, January 22nd, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. What does it mean for Alphabet if it's starting to cut bait on its moonshots? Is Google going to cut bait entirely on the entire country of Australia? More signs that Apple is atoning for its laptop design sins.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Looks like we were right. Platt is very much no visa, no cry. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. One of the moonshots is entering the Deadpool. Alphabet says it is shutting down Loon. Its internet balloon project calling it a successful experiment, but not a viable one. Quoting the great and legendary Stephen Levy in Wired. Tonight, Alphabet is announcing that it is grounding Loon. Astro Teller, who heads X and was also the chair of the Loon board,

Starting point is 00:01:30 recommended that Alphabet no longer fund it, effectively letting the air out of the division's balloon. No one wanted to pick up the mantle, he says. The interesting thing is how far Loon got before Alphabet pulled the plug. When Teller first heard the idea, he says, he gave it about a one or two percent chance of succeeding. By the time of its launch in 2013, which I traveled to New Zealand to attend, following some of its first internet-bearing balloons, it had gotten to around 10 percent. By the 2018 graduation, Teller thought it was 50-50. But in the last six months, the odds reset, like some grim reaperish version of the New York Times Needle. Loon had two challenges, the technological leap to deliver internet by balloon, and making the

Starting point is 00:02:14 business case that people would pay for it. While the tech side was solving problems, the commercial environment became less favorable. In the last decade, much of the underserved world became connected. Internet availability rose from 75% of the world to 93%. The remainder. The remainder of the world to 93%. The remaining areas are primarily populated by those who can't afford the 4G phones that receive Loon signals or aren't convinced that the internet, which in some cases has little content in their own language, was worth the effort. Teller came to realize that Loon was unlikely to ever contribute to Alphabet's profits, and so the bet was lost. The fall of Loon is a good occasion to take a look at X's accomplishments. Last year, the Moonshot Factory celebrated its

Starting point is 00:02:55 first decade. In that time, it's pioneered Autonomous Driving, which is now the basis of the other bet called Waymo. Another project, Google Brain, now powers much of Google's technology with deep learning, and Alphabet still has high hopes for X graduates like its medical bet Verily, and its drone delivery company Wing. And still inside X are projects involving robots and food, but it has also populated a bonyard of costly failures, now including Loon. But Teller won't call it a failure. Loon, he says, was a successful experiment, considering that he just killed a costly high-profile enterprise, I asked him what an unsuccessful experiment might look like. Real failure is when the data tells you what you've been doing isn't the right thing and you do it anyway, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:41 Loon was a success, he says, because once it was clear that it would never become a viable business or solve internet connectivity, he called it quits, end quote. So my initial thoughts here were, this is not a good sign for alphabet overall, if you believe my longstanding theory that the American of blood they can squeeze from the Google Stone is starting to run dry. Looks like Alphabet is tightening its belt, looking to cut costs. But this is an excellent point made by Michael Grinich on Twitter. Quote, the day SpaceX reused that first rocket was the real ending for Project Loon. A 10x reduction in cost to orbit meant it was inevitable satellite internet would win. Still, it's a shame. Loon was such a cool idea and execute. well. Alas, it was the laser disk of global internet, end quote. And I thought Parker Thompson

Starting point is 00:04:34 had a great point to, quote, I'm sympathetic to the view Google should just return capital to shareholders, but to be honest, they do really neat things I'm skeptical VCs would fund with their patience. I won't be surprised if eventually they hit a winner that pays for them all. Do we not remember Android, end quote. This has been an ongoing story that I don't think we've, covered yet. There has been legislation making its way through the Parliament in Australia that would force digital platforms like Facebook and Google to pay media companies for said content, especially when they feature snippets of the content. Facebook has threatened to prevent Australians from posting news to the news feed if this law goes through. And as for Google, quoting the Guardian,

Starting point is 00:05:27 on Friday, Google delivered an ultimatum to the government saying it would not be viable to continue offering search in Australia if the code goes ahead. The company's Australian managing director Mel Silva told a Senate committee the proposed news code was untenable and would set a dangerous precedent for paying for links. The principle of unrestricted linking between websites is fundamental to search and coupled with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the code were to become law. It would give us no real choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia, she said. Withdrawing our services from Australia is the last thing that Google want to have happen,

Starting point is 00:06:06 especially when there is another way forward, end quote. Silva said the company wanted to make changes to the code to make it workable, and the company was keen to enter into agreements with media companies to pay for content, pointing out around 450 deals have been made with media companies around the world. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said at a press conference in Brisbane that the government would not respond to threats. quote, let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That's done in our Parliament. It's done by our government. And that's how things work here in Australia. And people who

Starting point is 00:06:38 want to work with that in Australia, you're very welcome. But we don't respond to threats, end quote. Apparently, news articles only make up under 5% of what Australians share on Facebook. So frankly, given the garbage that most people share on Facebook, might that be a good thing for all involved if Facebook stopped people from sharing news on the news feed, less misinformation spread, or maybe more, I don't know. But I'm not sure I understand why Google would have to shut down search if this law were passed. Like, wouldn't this only affect Google News? As quoted, Google has been going around the world cutting deals with publishers to pay for news in Google News. So maybe it would be worth it for both sides to collectively call each other's bluff here.

Starting point is 00:07:29 It would be maybe worth it for them and worth it for all of us because we could run a real-time experiment on a number of angles. We would learn, is Google displaying snippets of news articles more valuable to publishers than it is for Google? Would the publishers beg Google to come back? Or we could maybe see if when forced users would find search engines as interchangeable. would we be able to prove that Google's moat is a monopolistic one if, say, everyone in Australia switched to Bing and it was fine? Or could even this be an entrepreneurial godsend for homegrown search to rise up in Australia? I don't think I have an opinion on either side here, because I'm not sure who's right in this argument, but that's what I'm saying. Let's go ahead and find out. Take the leap, guys, because maybe this would be a perfect control study to see who's right to what degree. and in what specific ways. Mark German can't quit with his Apple scoops this week. His sources are telling him that Apple is working on a thinner and lighter 13-inch high-end

Starting point is 00:08:37 MacBook Air that will get the next-gen Apple Silicon. We'll see the return of MagSafe charging, and all of this could come as soon as the second half of this year. Apple has discussed making the laptop smaller by shrinking the border around the screen, which will remain 13 inches. The current model weighs 2.8 pounds and is just over half an inch at its thickest point. The company considered building a larger version of the MacBook Air with a 15-inch screen, but Apple isn't moving forward with this for the next generation, said the people who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

Starting point is 00:09:11 And Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, end quote. But again, German also says that it looks like my dreams are finally coming true. It seems like Apple is continuing to make amends for the last five years of Lappell. top sins. I mean, there's enough rumors here that I have to start believing like this is real. Quoting German again, quote, the company is planning to bring back an SD card slot for the next MacBook pros so users can insert memory cards from digital cameras. The heavily criticized touchbar, the current model's touchscreen function row, is also going. This is looking like the Fix Everything edition, end quote. Remember how that acquisition of fintech startup plaid by

Starting point is 00:09:59 Visa blew up recently, and I told you Plaid didn't seem to be all that broken up about the deal getting broken up, probably because everyone could see that the original deal was severely undervalued in this current environment of FinTech being everyone's favorite sector at the moment. Well, the information is reporting that Plaid is seeking financing that could triple its valuation to around $15 billion. They're probably doing so with confidence because, as I told you, everyone wants a piece of Plaid, quote. After the U.S. Department of Justice in November sued to block visas, $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid, several VC backers of the financial infrastructure startup said they began to get texts, emails, and calls from other investors seeking to buy their shares.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Then, when Visa and Plaid terminated their merger agreement on January 12, in part due to fears antitrust litigation could extend another year, the offers accelerated. But because of the exuberance around newly public technology firms, as well as fintech companies such as Square, PayPal, and Adion. Several investors said they are holding onto their shares expecting the company's valuation to increase substantially in its next financing round. One investor said he received 12 calls from people interested in buying Plaid shares in the last week after the visa deal had been scrapped. Another existing Plaid shareholder said a potential investor had offered to pay an implied share price of roughly $1,000 a piece, more than four times visas.

Starting point is 00:11:27 acquisition price, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. First up, every time there is a change in the White House. One of the most consequential changes, at least to tech, is the changing of the guard at the FCC. We now know who is going to be the head of the FCC under Biden. It's Jessica Rosenworsel. Currently one of the two Democratic commissioners on the FCC who has been named acting

Starting point is 00:12:00 chairwoman of the agency. NBC News has a profile of Rosenworsel, who, among other things, has been a big proponent of net neutrality and expanding broadband access. She was re-nominated in 2017 by President Donald Trump while the FCC was led by Chairman Ajit Pai during his historic undoing of the country's network neutrality protections. Now, as the president's choice to lead the agency, she's likely to pick up the network neutrality baton again, which prohibited Internet service providers from charge. web sites to reach users at faster speeds. When Sherman Tom Wheeler ran the agency under Obama, Rosenworsal boldly pushed him to create more aggressive network neutrality rules, a stance he eventually adopted and led to the network neutrality protections that were passed in 2015. And when Pi came to lead the agency with the intention to take a weed whacker to net neutrality

Starting point is 00:12:51 in 2017, she didn't sit quietly either. Quote, let's roar, let's make a ruckus, let's stop this plan in its tracks. She tweeted in 2017 when Pi released his plan to rescind the net neutrality rules. Over 22 million comments were submitted to the agency in response to the removal of the internet traffic rules, end quote. Next, Marker has the improbable backstory as to how the lowly PDF basically played the long game and became maybe the default document standard of the modern internet era, quote, when is the last time you actually thought about PDFs? The tempo of digital culture is set by fast-paced, head-snapping novelty. So it's probably been a while, or more likely never, since you stopped to think about where the ubiquitous PDF came from. The portable document

Starting point is 00:13:42 format that essentially strives to replicate paper in digital form has been around since the early pre-web 1990s. Thoroughly lacking in glamour or sizzle, the PDF has not only persisted for decades, but prevailed. Even stalwarts like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint get challenged by rival offerings from Google or Apple, but no PDF killer has emerged. In fact, PDF inventor Adobe reports that in its 2020 fiscal year alone, about 303 billion PDFs were opened using its document cloud service, a 17% annual increase during a year in which the tech conversation was dominated by things like video conferencing, autonomous vehicles, and facial recognition technology. Clearly, we take the PDF's indestructibility for granted. The PDF is a digital equivalent to a paperclip or a ballpoint pen

Starting point is 00:14:31 in everyday tools so familiar it seems to have come out of nowhere, yet it's hard to imagine its absence. But none of these objects came out of nowhere, of course. They were all designed, engineered, created, refined. In the case of the PDF, what was crucial to its long-term success was the decision by the business that invented it to essentially give its creation away, end quote. over at 1-0, our friend Alex Cantowitz, says that the moderation wars we've been seeing on Facebook, on Twitter, on parlor, are coming to places like Spotify and Substack and Clubhouse soon, even coming to podcasts I've been hearing whispers of recently. Substack, Spotify, and Clubhouse's current perspective on content moderation, mirror how Twitter, Facebook, and Google once viewed the practice. Twitter executives initially called themselves the free speech wing of the free speech party. Facebook insisted it had no business touching political content.

Starting point is 00:15:29 YouTube allowed Alex Jones and other wingnets to build misinformation empires on its service. Now Substack CEO Chris Best, reflecting the smaller platform's attitude on moderation, told CGR that if you're looking for him to take an editorial position, you should find another service. After initially resisting aggressive content moderation, aside from no-brainers like child porn, the bigger platforms have slowly relented. Quote, they are agreeing that they need to moderate more aggressively and in more ways than they used to. Evelyn Doick, a Harvard Law School lecturer who studies content moderation told one zero, and if past is prologue, their path to the current state is worth revisiting, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:08 And finally, let's wrap up today with a quick couple of review hits for the Galaxy S-21 lineup. Over at the verge, Dieter Bone says, The Galaxy S-21 Ultra has a beautiful screen with a high refresh rate and a great camera system, but it's let down by software with ads and the usual subpar Bixby experience. His conclusion, 8.5 out of 10, and quote, I doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S-21 Ultra will convince many iPhone users to switch. The ecosystem lock-in on iOS is too strong for that, and getting the most out of Samsung's version of Android is daunting.

Starting point is 00:16:48 If you can navigate the software, the size, and the price tag, the Galaxy S-21 Ultra is the best Android phone available today. I don't know how long it will be able to hold on to that crown, but it's got it now. The Samsung Galaxy S-21 Ultra is finally worthy of the name, end quote. And over adding gadget, Sherilyn Lowe says the Galaxy S-21 regular has an attractive design, the same top-tier CPU and 120-hertz refresh rate as the S-21 plus. and S-21 Ultra, but the screen is lower-res, and some of the zoomed-out photos are muddy. Nonetheless, her conclusion is, quote, unsurprisingly, the S-21 is a good phone. It has a powerful processor, a lovely screen, capable cameras, and a long-lasting battery.

Starting point is 00:17:35 It even has some useful software and a gorgeous new design in eye-catching colors. At $800, the S-21 is more reasonably priced than its stablemates. if you prefer a pure Google experience and want to save $100, the Pixel 5 may be good enough for you, but the S-21 has a more versatile camera setup and faster processor, making it the best Android phone for the money, end quote. We do have a weekend bonus episode this weekend, that long gestating interview with Avi Loeb,

Starting point is 00:18:13 chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He also chairs the advisory committee for the Breakthrough Star Shot Initiative and serves as the Science Theory Director for all initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, as well as chair of the board on physics and astronomy of the National Academies.

Starting point is 00:18:42 You might have heard him earlier this week on Joe Rogan, given all of those bona fide. why he wanted to talk to me. I don't know, but I was thrilled he reached out and couldn't pass up the opportunity. So get ready for some talk of real space science. Time to talk Fermi paradox, the Drake equation, the great filter hypothesis, and specifically the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system, and why he thinks it was either a solar sail, a space buoy, or at the very least some artifact from an alien civilization. It was so much fun to do this episode.

Starting point is 00:19:23 Hope you enjoy it. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/22 – Alphabet Sends Loon To The Deadpool

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